Gwendoline Butler - A Double Coffin

GWENDOLINE BUTLER

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1996

Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1996

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006497745

Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007545445

Version: 2014–07–07

Cover

Title Page GWENDOLINE BUTLER

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Keep Reading

About the Author

Author’s Note

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

A brief Calendar of the life and career of John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London Police

John Coffin is a Londoner by birth, his father is unknown and his mother was a difficult lady of many careers and different lives who abandoned him in infancy to be looked after by a woman who may have been a relative of his father and who seems to have acted as his mother’s dresser when she was on the stage. He kept in touch with this lady, whom he called Mother, lodged with her in his early career and looked after her until she died.

After serving briefly in the army, he joined the Metropolitan Police, soon transferring to the plain-clothes branch as a detective.

He became a sergeant and was very quickly promoted to inspector a year later. Ten years later, he was a superintendent and then chief superintendent.

There was a bad patch in his career about which he is reluctant to talk. His difficult family background has complicated his life and possibly accounts for an unhappy period when, as he admits, his career went down a black hole. His first marriage split apart at this time and his only child died.

From this dark period he was resurrected by a spell in a secret, dangerous undercover operation about which even now not much is known. But the esteem he won then was recognized when the Second City of London was being formed and he became Chief Commander of its Police Force. He has married again, an old love, Stella Pinero, who is herself a very successful actress. He has also discovered two siblings, a much younger sister and brother.

John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London, sat in the sunlight at the desk in his office and allowed himself to feel surprise as the message came through. ‘A Mr Bradshaw wants to see me? And urgently?’

He had been listening to Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro, and reading a travel brochure, while at his feet lay the new family dog, a white peke called Augustus. His old dog had succumbed to great years and an eventful life, both of which had done his heart in. The record player in the office and the presence there of Augustus were the work of his wife who had decreed that there must be a show of more civilization in the workplace. And what could be more civilized than Mozart (a dose to be taken once a day at least) and a Pekingese of impeccable breeding if of uncertain temper.

He had been content on this sunny October day. Content was now shattered.

‘Richard Lavender wants to see me? Dick Lavender?’

His visitor nodded; he was a tall, thin man with crest of crisp hair just going grey. His eyes were an odd mixture between green and blue, attractive, Coffin thought.

‘He does. Soon, if you please. Perhaps a first visit this morning?’

John Albert Bradshaw had come with an introduction from the Home Secretary and had laid his card on the table as soon as he arrived. Dr J. A. Bradshaw. Not a medical doctor, he had said at once – political science, Edinburgh. Coffin had the notion that this information was proffered to establish status. I am an important person in my own right, Dr Bradshaw was saying.

Coffin was interested, intrigued even, at what amounted to a royal command, from a great old man, but he played for time.

‘I have a lot on hand at the moment, and I was thinking of going away on holiday.’ Coffin did not take many holidays, too few, his wife Stella said, and they were going to have these few days on the Italian lakes. Or were they? Would he get away?

‘You’ll get away, he’s thoughtful about that sort of thing. He goes away himself sometimes, he has a cottage in Fife.’

The Thane of Fife had a wife, but where is she now? recited Coffin to himself. Why did I think of that? And why this sudden quick wince of foreboding? And why do I think of his wife? Damn Macbeth. Shakespeare and Macbeth get everywhere. Aloud he said: ‘I didn’t know he was still alive.’

That got a reprimand. ‘Indeed you did.’

‘Yes, yes …’ He did, of course, it was his business to know if the distinguished and important inhabitants living in his Second City of London were alive or dead. He was responsible for their safety.

Part of the job. He had taken on the task of policing the Second City of London some years ago now and had made a success of it. He had melded together the lively and criminous districts of Swinehouse, East Hythe and Spinnergate, with violent histories that went back before William the Norman, and helped them to live, not only with each other but with the new, up-and-coming areas like Evelyn Fields and Tower Hills. He had been a success, been acknowledged as a success, had a happy marriage with a well-known actress and had come through the threat of a serious illness. But nature had nudged him on the shoulder and said, in that sly, familiar way it had: OK, so you survived, but you may not come through next time.